First thoughts: Mayday, mayday
What explains the Democrats’ summer slide and where did it begin? Here’s one theory: go back to May… The two big external forces that month: the BP spill and the Greek/European economic instability…
From Mark Murray and Ali Weinberg
*** Mayday, Mayday: There’s no question that this summer has been brutal for Democrats and the Obama White House. Just look at the national and race-by-race polls, and listen to the pundits who are predicting significant midterm losses for the party in power. But how do we explain -- both politically and economically -- this summer slide for Democrats? Where did it begin? Here's one theory: go back to May. At the beginning of that month, the NBC/WSJ poll showed President Obama's approval rating back at 50%, after the conclusion of the health-care debate; the same poll found that Obama’s economic handling number had inched up; and the jobs report for April revealed the economy added some 300,000 jobs, including sizable gains in the private sector. Happy days, it seemed, were here again.
*** Two disasters in May: But in May, there also were a series of disasters -- both figuratively and literally. The BP spill, which began in late April, became an ongoing news story that month, with Americans able to see on their TV sets all the oil gushing from the well. Yet the more significant event might have been what took place on May 6, when the economic instability in Greece and Europe took center stage and when the Dow tumbled nearly 1,000 points before partially recovering. And look at the numbers afterward: In our June NBC/WSJ poll, the president’s approval rating dropped to 45%; his economic handling went down; and the jobs report for May showed that while the economy added more than 400,000 jobs, almost all of them were Census jobs. Since then, the monthly jobs numbers have been on the minus side, and forecasters are predicting another net-negative report when the August numbers come out tomorrow.
*** External forces matter: Of course, the BP spill, the instability in Europe, and the Dow’s plunge don’t explain the entire political and economic situation. The winds were already at the GOP’s back well before May (see Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts in January). The U.S. economy was severely weakened after the financial crash in 2008. The divisive debate over health care took a toll on Obama and the Democrats. And a series of distractions knocked the White House off message. But what May did was wipe out any Democratic hope for economic or political recovery in enough time for the midterms. That month also shows us that external forces do matter in politics; Team Obama should know after it benefited from Lehman Brothers’ collapse in Sept. 2008. And an external force or two might be the only thing standing in the way of big GOP gains come November.
firstread.msnbc.msn.com |
